Inequality – Both Economic and In Access to Liberty And Justice – Skyrockets to Historic Levels

According to a report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service late last year, “U.S. income distribution appears to be among the most unequal of all major industrialized countries and the United States appears to be among the nations experiencing the greatest increases in measures of income.”

Now David Stockman – Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan – hammers on this theme in a new book:

Even the tepid post-2008 recovery has not been what it was cracked up to be, especially with respect to the Wall Street presumption that the American consumer would once again function as the engine of GDP growth. It goes without saying, in fact, that the precarious plight of the Main Street consumer has been obfuscated by the manner in which the state’s unprecedented fiscal and monetary medications have distorted the incoming data and economic narrative.

These distortions implicate all rungs of the economic ladder, but are especially egregious with respect to the prosperous classes. In fact, a wealth-effects driven mini-boom in upper-end consumption has contributed immensely to the impression that average consumers are clawing their way back to pre-crisis spending habits. This is not remotely true.

Five years after the top of the second Greenspan bubble (2007), inflation-adjusted retail sales were still down by about 2 percent. This fact alone is unprecedented. By comparison, five years after the 1981 cycle top real retail sales (excluding restaurants) had risen by 20 percent. Likewise, by early 1996 real retail sales were 17 percent higher than they had been five years earlier. And with a fair amount of help from the great MEW (measurable economic welfare) raid, constant dollar retail sales in mid-2005 where 13 percent higher than they had been five years earlier at the top of the first Greenspan bubble.

So this cycle is very different, and even then the reported five years’ stagnation in real retail sales does not capture the full story of consumer impairment. The divergent performance of Wal-Mart’s domestic stores over the last five years compared to Whole Foods points to another crucial dimension; namely, that the averages are being materially inflated by the upbeat trends among the prosperous classes.

For all practical purposes Wal-Mart is a proxy for Main Street America, so it is not surprising that its sales have stagnated since the end of the Greenspan bubble. Thus, its domestic sales of $226 billion in fiscal 2007 had risen to an inflation-adjusted level of only $235 billion by fiscal 2012, implying real growth of less than 1 percent annually.

By contrast, Whole Foods most surely reflects the prosperous classes given that its customers have an average household income of $80,000, or more than twice the Wal-Mart average. During the same five years, its inflation-adjusted sales rose from $6.5 billion to $10.5 billion, or at a 10 percent annual real rate. Not surprisingly, Whole Foods’ stock price has doubled since the second Greenspan bubble, contributing to the Wall Street mantra about consumer resilience.

To be sure, the 10-to-1 growth difference between the two companies involves factors such as the healthy food fad, that go beyond where their respective customers reside on the income ladder. Yet this same sharply contrasting pattern is also evident in the official data on retail sales.

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That the consumption party is highly skewed to the top is born out even more dramatically in the sales trends of publicly traded retailers. Their results make it crystal clear that Wall Street’s myopic view of the so-called consumer recovery is based on the Fed’s gifts to the prosperous classes, not any spending resurgence by the Main Street masses.

The latter do their shopping overwhelmingly at the six remaining discounters and mid-market department store chains—Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, J. C. Penney, Kohl’s, and Macy’s. This group posted $405 billion in sales in 2007, but by 2012 inflation-adjusted sales had declined by nearly 3 percent to $392 billion. The abrupt change of direction here is remarkable: during the twenty-five years ending in 2007 most of these chains had grown at double-digit rates year in and year out.

After a brief stumble in late 2008 and early 2009, sales at the luxury and high-end retailers continued to power upward, tracking almost perfectly the Bernanke Fed’s reflation of the stock market and risk assets. Accordingly, sales at Tiffany, Saks, Ralph Lauren, Coach, lululemon, Michael Kors, and Nordstrom grew by 30 percent after inflation during the five-year period.

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This tale of two retailer groups is laden with implications. It not only shows that the so-called recovery is tenuous and highly skewed to a small slice of the population at the top of the economic ladder, but also that statist economic intervention has now become wildly dysfunctional. Largely based on opulence at the top, Wall Street brays that economic recovery is under way even as the Main Street economy flounders.

Respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: all demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.

Taken as a whole, the results suggest to us that there is much more agreement than disagreement about wealth inequality. Across differences in wealth, income, education, political affiliation and fiscal conservatism, the vast majority of people (89%) preferred distributions of wealth significantly more equal than the current wealth spread in the United States. In fact, only 12 people out of 849 favored the US distribution. The media portrays huge policy divisions about redistribution and inequality – no doubt differences in ideology exist, but we think there may be more of a consensus on what’s fair than people realize.

Why Do We Have So Much Inequality?

If runaway inequality is so harmful to our economy – and if most people don’t want so much inequality – why is inequality becoming more and more extreme?

The short answer is because the super-elite want it. The rest of this post sets forth the details. (By pointing out that inequality is skyrocketing, we’re not calling for a redistribution of wealth downward. We’re calling for an end to policies which allow wealth to be concentrated in a few hands.)

“This is the biggest transfer of wealth in history”, as the giant banks have handed their toxic debts from fraudulent activities to the countries and their people.

Stiglitz said in 2009 that Geithner’s toxic asset plan “amounts to robbery of the American people”.

And economist Dean Baker said in 2009 that the true purpose of the bank rescue plans is “a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives”.

David Stockman notes that the Federal Reserve’s policies have helped the rich get richer at everyone else’s expense:

The central banking branch of the state remains hostage to Wall Street speculators who threaten a hissy fit sell-off unless they are juiced again and again. Monetary policy has thus become an engine of reverse Robin Hood redistribution; it flails about implementing quasi-Keynesian demand–pumping theories that punish Main Street savers, workers, and businessmen while creating endless opportunities, as shown below, for speculative gain in the Wall Street casino.

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These futile stimulus actions are demanded and promoted by the crony capitalist lobbies which slipstream on whatever dispensations as can be mustered. At the end of the day, the state labors mightily, yet only produces recovery for the 1 percent.

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that inequality is caused by the use of money to shape government policies to benefit those with money. As Wikipedia notes:

A better explainer of growing inequality, according to Stiglitz, is the use of political power generated by wealth by certain groups to shape government policies financially beneficial to them. This process, known to economists as rent-seeking, brings income not from creation of wealth but from “grabbing a larger share of the wealth that would otherwise have been produced without their effort”[59]

Rent seeking is often thought to be the province of societies with weak institutions and weak rule of law, but Stiglitz believes there is no shortage of it in developed societies such as the United States. Examples of rent seeking leading to inequality include

One big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy …. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.

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Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth …. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

The financial industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle on campaign donations and lobbying, much of which is aimed at maintaining the subsidy [to the banks by the public]. The result is a bloated financial sector and recurring credit gluts.

Another reason why the super-rich are becoming much richer and everyone else poorer is that Obama is prosecuting virtually no financial criminals.

Goosing the Stock Market

Some cheerleaders say rising stock prices make consumers feel wealthier and therefore readier to spend. But to the extent most Americans have any assets at all their net worth is mostly in their homes, and those homes are still worth less than they were in 2007. The “wealth effect” is relevant mainly to the richest 10 percent of Americans, most of whose net worth is in stocks and bonds.

The recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station. The economy’s meager gains are going mostly to the wealthiest.

Workers’ wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable — about 64 percent through boom and bust alike.

The “labor share of national income has fallen to its lower level in modern history … some recovery it has been – a recovery in which labor’s share of the spoils has declined to unprecedented levels.”

The above-quoted AP article further notes:

Stock market gains go disproportionately to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, who own more than 80 percent of outstanding stock, according to an analysis by Edward Wolff, an economist at Bard College.

As of 2007, the bottom 50% of the U.S. population owned only one-half of one percent of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds in the U.S. On the other hand, the top 1% owned owned 50.9%.***

(Of course, the divergence between the wealthiest and the rest has only increased since 2007.)

Professor G. William Domhoff demonstrated that the richest 10% own 98.5% of all financial securities, and that:

The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.

Economists at Northeastern University have found that the current economic recovery in the United States has been unusually skewed in favor of corporate profits and against increased wages for workers.

In their newly released study, the Northeastern economists found that since the recovery began in June 2009 following a deep 18-month recession, “corporate profits captured 88 percent of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1 percent” of that growth.

The median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009.

***

Most ordinary Americans aren’t getting raises anywhere close to those of these chief executives. Many aren’t getting raises at all — or even regular paychecks. Unemployment is still stuck at more than 9 percent.

***

“What is of more concern to shareholders is that it looks like C.E.O. pay is recovering faster than company fortunes,” says Paul Hodgson, chief communications officer for GovernanceMetrics International, a ratings and research firm.

According to a report released by GovernanceMetrics in June, the good times for chief executives just keep getting better. Many executives received stock options that were granted in 2008 and 2009, when the stock market was sinking.

Now that the market has recovered from its lows of the financial crisis, many executives are sitting on windfall profits, at least on paper. In addition, cash bonuses for the highest-paid C.E.O.’s are at three times prerecession levels, the report said.

***

The average American worker was taking home $752 a week in late 2010, up a mere 0.5 percent from a year earlier. After inflation, workers were actually making less.

Unemployment has never been so high — 9.1 percent — this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.

– The average worker’s hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.

– The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.

Large banks, who are doing much better and large corporations, whom you point out and everyone is pointing out, are in excellent shape. The rest of the economy, small business, small banks, and a very significant amount of the labour force, which is in tragic unemployment, long-term unemployment – that is pulling the economy apart.

Money Being Sucked Out of the U.S. Economy … But Big Bucks Are Being Made Abroad

Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They’re hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.

***

The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8% last month, even though companies are performing well: All but 4% of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.

But the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9%, says Robert Scott, the institute’s senior international economist.

“There’s a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy,” says Scott.

***

Many of the products being made overseas aren’t coming back to the United States. Demand has grown dramatically this year in emerging markets like India, China and Brazil.

We noted above that inequality in America today is worse than in modern Egypt, Tunisia or Yemen, many banana republics in Latin America, worse than experienced by slaves in 1774 colonial America, and much worse than in ancient Rome – which was built on slave labor.

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

17 Responses to “Poverty Spikes In America … While the Government Throws Money at the Super-Elite”

Shipping our industrial jobs overseas was all part of the plan to jump start the formation of a middle class in China. I think it will ultimately benefit the world, but in the short term, a lot of people have been thrown under the bus in the US. South Korea seems to be red hot. Hyndai is making some darn fine vehicles which look somewhat like Toyotas, but at a much lower price point.

Very interesting article, however, the author presents the cause as influence by bankers, self-serving politicians, etc. I agree that this is a big part of the cause. But I wonder if another part of the cause is that a large and growing portion of our population doesn’t possess the skills to earn a good living in our more technologically advanced society. I mean, how many clerks do we need at Bed, Bath and Beyond? If there is an overabundance of workers skilled at the menial level, they will be cheap to buy.

David Stockman was present at the birth of the practical application of trickle-down economics, the use of tax cuts to solve every imaginable problem, deregulation, and “deficits don’t matter”. The irony of him leading the charge against income inequality is staggering.

i’m picking a nit. if you read The Education of David Stockman http://bit.ly/ZhWYmU he knew it was voodoo economics back in 1981. it’s a really good read, watching Reagonomics unfold in “real” time. theory meets reality, White House eventually played to win, instead of sticking to philosophy

Stockman’s solution to the income inequality that resulted from the first edition of voodoo economics is apparently a second edition of voodoo economics AKA austerianism which effects the poor and middle class much more negatively than the rich and therefore equals …more income inequality.

As one wag on the intertubes commented (forgot where and paraphrase): Stockman calling for government/financial reform is like Lizzy Borden calling for reform of geriatric care.

i’m certainly not defending Stockman’s current solutions to income inequality. but Greider’s piece was surprising in that we (and the OMB director) knew trickle down economics didn’t work since the 1980s, and that it was not a new idea back in 1981, trickle down was rebranded and sold as supply side. yet for the last 30 years, it dominated the political discourse …

@Hue, I understood you. I was actually commenting on rd’s point WRT irony.

Messed up the Marx quote too but it made sense at the time. The quote is usually given as “History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” but it turns out that is not what he actually wrote either so no biggie.

As to Stockman, what he knew in 1980 and what he (and others) claim he knew, is interesting but what he seems to know now and the advice he is giving now is destructive and frankly borders on outright liquidationism cf. Andrew W. Mellon*

*Advice to President Hoover at the beginning of the Great Depression, “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.”

What about two of Stockman’s solutions, higher income taxes and a 30% wealth tax. It has always struck me when I watch the fight over income taxes in that income taxes are annual crumbs for the wealthy, loose change under the couch. Their assets are throwing off passive income that dramatically lowers their income taxes as a percentage of annual gross income, and much less as a percentage of wealth.

Phil Mickelson may be paying 50% to 60% of his $45 to $60 million income this year. But his assets, the 10s or hundreds of millions his golf swing produced and accumulated in the past 20 years probably is kicking out as much each year as he is paying in income taxes. You can’t spend it all or take it with you.

I have always been rather puzzled when people say there is no social security trust fund. When I deposit money in a bank, a MMF or buy a stock, bond or ETF there is no “cash in the bank” as the bank deposits have been lent out (subject to reserve requirements) and all the other items depend on faith in the backer of the security or the market.

We all have treasuries in our investment accounts either directly or indirectly and they have never failed to pay—why would the SS trust fund be any less secure? Stockman is on drugs, me thinks.

I’m very sympathetic to the arguments presented here, but I have to say that when you check the links, there are just more links. It doesn’t seem that well sourced when you get right down to it. I’m a lawyer, and sympathize with the points about two legal systems, but there really isn’t much meat on this article’s bone when you look for support. The problem for the little guy is a highly conservative, pro-business federal judiciary, and much of the same in many state courts. The parts about Obama being as bad and as cravenly subservient to Wall Street has an element of truth because of Tim Geithner’s role in the TARP etc when he was at NY Fed, but a whole lot is just Washington gridlock, and the neutering of the SEC and other agencies by Congress. I think Obama has not been aggressive in prosecuting Wall Street, but Congress has repeatedly cut funding for regulatory agencies, and refused to confirm Obama appointees, so I would put a lot of the blame there, but fault Obama for less than forceful leadership.

[...] Here’s a good post that mostly makes the right argument. Most of our inequality these days results from the government. It subsidizes and benefits wealthy people in different ways. Because the government is so powerful, wealthy people and companies tend to be what economists call rent-seekers. They make political contributions and pay lobbyists to get favorable law, regulations, subsidies, and protections from government. [...]

I sadly agree that Obama has disappointed in the area of leadership, at least in the economic arena. Much like Jimmy Carter, I think he lacks the stomach for politics as the game is played today in Washington. Money is power, and the deck has gotten alarmingly stacked in favor of the shrinking set of haves.

What is needed is, as this blogger says, redistribution of wealth and meaningful reform of financial markets. It is simply unacceptable for the workers, whose productivity has risen heroically, to reap zero benefit from their industry. Unacceptable for the nation’s treasure to be siphoned off into foreign banks, where it cannot circulate and create prosperity for those who produced it. Unacceptable for our democracy and constitution to be hijacked by the billionaires.

What baffles me, though, is the profound stupidity of the Kochs and their ilk. How can they fail to grasp that their ultimate success will be the complete ownership of a failed state? Our infrastructure is not being maintained. Our schools are failing to teach students how to distinguish fact from opinion or science from superstition. Our civil servants–the ones who protect us from crime, fire, and natural calamities, collect our garbage, and keep planes from colliding–are being shamed and laid off. Small businesses stand little chance of growing when consumers have no money to spend.

These problems will not be addressed as long as congressional Republicans remain convinced that their principles are more sacred than those of democracy. If they are, as it appears, owned by the financial cartel, then their handlers should–for their own sake–instruct them to return to the business of governing the country in a way that will allow us all to prosper.

This discussion seems to confine itself to the past decade and the the past two administrations in Washington. I think we need to look at a larger picture to understand what’s happened to our democracy. I believe it started with things like LBJ’s great society, Nixon’s creation of the EPA. The American business community felt as though it was under attack and it responded accordingly. Over the past 40 years or so, the corporations have essentially, and quite deliberately, seized control of the government.

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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